Omaha Beach

Most of us stood around staring, mouths open, trying to take it all in. That beach is just so huge. It's so far from the waterline up to the sea wall. The bluffs are so high and forbidding. There are concrete bunkers and trench lines everywhere you look. There were something like 2,000 Germans defending that one stretch of beach at the Vierville draw. Good god, how did anyone survive?! I was one of many who spent some time on that beach on the 4th of July, shaking my head in wonderment, disbelieving what had happened on that spot 65 years before.

Len told us about some of the stories that we know through pop culture and other, more factual bits of literature, and that many of them came from that very stretch of sand. For one day, we stood at the spot where many of the worst stories of Omaha Beach originate. In another time, that place was hell on earth.

Today I looked up something that Len told us about the infamous Bedford Boys of Virginia - the town that had a full generation of kids who were basically wiped out in a few hours' time. And it was right there in that spot. You know that scene in Saving Private Ryan when the boat drops its ramp and the entire platoon is cut to shreds by a waiting machine gun? That incident started with the Bedford Boys' experience. This monument was built on top of the bunker referenced in the story, the one at the mouth of the draw that faced east, down the beach:

There were many powerful moments on our trip, but for me I think that the trip to Omaha Beach topped the list. I came away with a couple pounds of sand and rocks which I plan to put into keepsake vials for myself and others.